OttawaREDBLACKS.com
There is a tree in the nation’s capital that’s a little worse for wear these days and you can thank the coronavirus and Nick Arbuckle’s arm for that.
The REDBLACKS’ new starting quarterback has had to summon up some ingenuity when it comes to finding things to throw at in this time of isolation and for a short while that included using a nearby tree as a stand-in receiver.
He does have a net he can throw into, but windy days in Arbuckle’s south Ottawa neighbourhood often mean that the net won’t stay upright. So he’s had to find more reliable targets for his solitary workouts.
“I was throwing at the tree,” Arbuckle says of a routine he quickly had to abandon in favour of something different. “But I started to break some of the branches off the tree. So I felt like it was gonna be frowned upon,” he adds, chuckling.
Too bad. Arbuckle and the tree were working up some pretty good chemistry, it seems.
“The tree actually had pretty good hands,” Arbuckle says, impressed. “If you threw it to the right spot, it would catch the ball and you wouldn’t have to go chase it.”
Nick Arbuckle has had to get creative over the last few weeks, having gotten in just one pass-and-catch session with REDBLACKS’ receiver Brad Sinopoli before a life of physical distancing and quarantine arrived abruptly.
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“My eight-month pregnant wife isn’t going to go out there and catch for me yet,” he says, the “yet” indicating pretty strongly that Zakiyyah would surely be out there running patterns for him if the couple was not expecting their first child on May 8th.
With his Ottawa teammates a no-go and with Zakiyyah still weeks away from re-joining the family’s personal practice roster, Arbuckle has reminded us all of that old chestnut; the one about necessity being the mother of invention.
Now that mercy for the tree has been established, the 26-year-old native of Oxnard, California has rigged up something a little different, heading for a nearby outdoor basketball court where he can jam the small end of a pylon into a chain link fence, the protruding square base being used as his target.
“The ball bounces a lot less than it did when I hit the tree so I found it was a better alternative,” Arbuckle says of the pylon solution. “After you hit it a handful of times it’ll fall out but it’s definitely a lot better than eventually chopping the tree down.”
Arbuckle’s imaginative throwing sessions are just part and parcel of his new life in Ottawa, with unforeseen hitches forcing the young quarterback to scramble out of the pocket, so to speak, when it comes to preparing for an upcoming season that’s currently in limbo.
Those hitches also upended plans to plug he and Zakiyyah into their new community.
Traded by Calgary to the REDBLACKS in early January, and signing a new deal by the end of the month, Arbuckle was looking forward to immersing himself in all things Ottawa. There would be workouts with teammates and meetings with coaches. Lots of them. But, also, there would be days and nights on the town, meeting and greeting new friends, hatching plans to give time and effort to various community organizations.
Arbuckle, pictured here facing the REBLACKS in 2019, threw for 2,103 yards and 11 touchdowns filling in for an injured Bo Levi Mitchell (Photo: The Canadian Press)
“I started creating plans through OSEG (Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group) to start doing some different community outreach things,” says Arbuckle. “Just trying to do as much as we could through the third and fourth week of March.”
COVID-19 restrictions, however, scuttled all of those plans, of course.
“Fortunately my wife and I were able to get out here and get settled before that happened,” says Arbuckle of the general lockdown.
“Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do much in the community before then. But whenever this does lift, I’m going to try to do as much as I can to make sure that I can be whatever help that I can be to the people out there.”
Until then, Arbuckle will attempt to connect and do some good in other ways. Recently, he used his social media accounts to help provide grocery delivery gift cards to those who might especially need them.
“I just thought (about) any way that I could help anybody out there that’s trying to find food to eat, but might not be able to get to the stores or might not want to get to the stores on a weekly basis. Because it’s a risk for anybody to leave their house, because you never know no matter what precautions you take.”
“There’s people out there that are more susceptible or battling health concerns, or are older,” Arbuckle adds. “They might not want to leave (home). If I can help in any way, I wanna be able to do that.”
Meanwhile, Arbuckle prepares.
Not only for the upcoming season, but for the imminent arrival of a baby girl. He and Zakiyyah are getting their reps in for delivery day.
“We just did a test run today,” he says. “Seeing how quickly we could get everything in the car and drive to the hospital. We didn’t actually go into the hospital, just drove to it.”
“We’re trying to get our time down,” he says, and then starts to laugh.
“Gotta get ready for game day.”
In Arbuckle’s garage, there’s a makeshift weight room. Nearby, in an empty park, he conducts solitary throwing sessions, zipping the ball up to 30 yards, sometimes, but mostly sticking to 10-20 yard reps, explaining that he likes to throw a lot of balls. And you can’t do that when you’re launching bomb after bomb after bomb.
The basketball court workouts – born after his go-to tree receiver bowed out – are now being moved to a wide open space beside that court, with Ottawa’s winter freeze slowly, grudgingly, giving way to a spring warm up.
“There’s a pretty big green open field that’s finally started to melt that I can use for throwing and some different change of direction stuff,” he says.
Frequent meetings are still occurring. Arbuckle speaks with head coach Paul LaPolice over the phone and has meeting with teammates as well as quarterbacks coach Steve Walsh through the same devices and apps that most of us are using to attempt to stay connected with each other.
“LaPo has done a great job of getting all the film and the cut-ups and the playbook up on our iPads so that we can still learn and still do meetings through Zoom and FaceTime,” says Arbuckle.
“We’re just trying to make sure that nothing really changes, other than the fact that we’re not doing stuff in person.
“And it’s going well,” he adds. “I can’t imagine, under the circumstance, it being able to go any better than it is. I feel like everything LaPo and the staff are doing to get us the information we need to learn is happening.”
All the theory, then, is being handled with precision. But the ability to build a little something on the field with teammates like Sinopoli and R.J. Harris and the rest of the REDBLACKS’ receivers is on hold. In that, Arbuckle and his mates are not alone and so at least there is not the sense that they are lagging far behind everyone else.
“It looks different, but in the end, it’s just trying to accomplish the same things,” says Arbuckle.
Things do, indeed, look different. That’s especially true when you’re settling into a new town with a new team, during very peculiar times.
And when your primary receivers, so far, are a pylon and a beleaguered tree.
